Bye-bye, oil sheiks of the Middle East

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - 0 Comments

Will new technologies make North American energy self-sufficiency a reality?

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

The rural state of North Dakota is famous mainly for its rough weather. Its largest city, Fargo, is best known to outsiders as the title of a noir movie in which a body is fed through a wood chipper. With a population half the size of Winnipeg’s scattered across rugged plains, it once held the distinction of being the least-visited state in the U.S. But today, so many people are flocking to North Dakota that there is nowhere to put them. In a nation beset by joblessness, workers are coming here in such numbers that an estimated 15,000 people are now living in trailers, cars, corporate “man camps” and other forms of makeshift housing. So scarce are places to sleep that in 2010 one firm housed some of its workers by trucking in a chunk of Vancouver’s recently used Olympic Village to the overwhelmed city of Williston.

The reason is an oil boom. Production in the state has surged from 100,000 barrels per day in 2007 to 500,000 barrels per day and growing—almost overnight making North Dakota the fourth-largest producer in the U.S., and on its way to becoming second only to Texas. And, like the Alberta oil sands boomtown of Fort McMurray—whose mayor recently visited to offer advice (“Plan ahead!”)—Williston is abruptly bursting.“First it got hard to find the hotel rooms. Then it was housing. Now it’s everything,” says Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council. The state is racing to build more houses, roads, schools and hospitals. The biggest sign of change: “Young people in the communities,” says Ness—sons and daughters are not leaving the state to look for work as soon as they turn of age. It’s been, he says, a “renaissance—and a challenge.”

A rebirth of the local economy is the least of it. The oil boom under way here is part of a global transformation with far-reaching consequences for matters of warfare, the environment and modern life. Like Alberta’s oil sands, the sudden bonanza in North Dakota is driven by recent technological advances that have, for the first time, made it economically viable to extract oil (and natural gas) from previously untappable geological formations—so-called “unconventional” fuel trapped in rock. Such formations have been discovered elsewhere around the United States, but for years sat fallow as a mere curiosity. Suddenly, however, the technology is available to get the oil and gas out. And the rise of the feasibility this type of oil and gas extraction is poised to transform the geopolitics of energy.

In spite of the considerable environmental and logistical challenges involved, these developments have led to feverish calls for “energy independence.” The prospect that the U.S. could fulfill all its own energy needs from domestic sources, plus those from friendly neighbours such as Canada, has become a rallying cry for the Republican presidential candidates who are attacking President Barack Obama for standing in the way of job creation and “energy security.” Obama’s decision to deny a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have moved Alberta oil sands crude to refineries on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, has become a staple topic on the Republican presidential trail. In November, the Obama administration did move to open more areas in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska to offshore drilling, but banned development along the East and West Coast, fuelling more criticism from industry groups and Republicans.

The debate over North American energy security has been unfolding against the backdrop of the unpredictable Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa, home to 70 per cent or more of the world’s known conventional oil reserves. “The Arab world is very possibly at the beginning of the great revolutionary period of the 21st century,” says Paul Sullivan, an economics professor at the National Defense University in Washington. “Nobody really knows how long this will go and how it will all play out.” Of course, non-oil-producing states like Egypt and Syria are in chaos. But tensions continue to threaten some of the region’s largest producers, like Libya, Algeria, Bahrain, even Saudi Arabia.

And now the discussion has been sent into overdrive by recent threats by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz—a choke point on the Persian Gulf separating Iran from Oman—as retaliation for harsh economic sanctions over its nuclear program and the threat of a military attack on its nuclear facilities. The Strait of Hormuz is only 54 km wide, but each day, 15 million barrels of oil—17 per cent of the oil consumed by the world—move through the waterway. It would be a global disaster.

The rise of North America as an energy power is starting to get attention overseas. “A few years ago, much of the global debate was based on the premise of acute resource scarcity and its economic and political ramifications,” said Khalid al-Falih, the head of Saudi Arabia’s state-owned energy company, Aramco, in a speech on Nov. 21. But, he added, “Rather than supply scarcity, oil supplies remain at comfortable levels, even given rising demand from fast-growing nations like China and India.” The reason? Abundant supplies and a “more balanced geographical distribution of unconventionals”—such as the new sources now being developed by Canada and the United States.

Canadians are among the loudest voices in the U.S. selling a vision of continental energy independence. One of the pitchmen is Brad Wall, the premier of Saskatchewan, who gives several U.S. speeches a year on energy. Speaking in December to conservative lawmakers from around the U.S. who had gathered in Phoenix, Ariz., he urged the audience to choose Canadian oil over what he calls “extreme oil” that depends on the U.S. military presence abroad. “I think we should have a broader goal continentally to move toward energy independence,” Wall told Maclean’s afterward. “Maybe this should be the moon mission of the next couple of decades.”

There is also a view that North American energy independence should include “Canadian energy independence.” Currently, Canada is a net exporter, producing more oil (2.5 million barrels per day) than Canadians consume (1.85 million). However, most Canadian production is exported from western provinces to the U.S., while about half of the crude used by Canadian refiners to meet domestic demand comes from imports—44 per cent of that from OPEC countries and 37 per cent from the North Sea, according to Natural Resources Canada. (The reason is the cost-effectiveness of exporting western oil to relatively closer American refineries, rather than moving it to refineries in Atlantic Canada, Ontario and Quebec.)

But are the Canadian and American unconventional sources enough to fuel continental energy independence—or, at the very least, to wean America off Middle Eastern oil? The number to start with is 19.1 million barrels—the amount of petroleum products the U.S. consumed per day in 2010, according to the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration. Most of that was used for transportation.

The U.S. only produced about half of that—9.4 million barrels per day (counting crude oil, natural gas liquids and biofuels)—leaving a gap of about 9.7 million barrels to be supplied through imports. Canada contributed the largest share—one-quarter. The next biggest supplier was Saudi Arabia, at 12 per cent, followed by Nigeria, Venezuela, Mexico and others. All told, OPEC members (Persian Gulf states, African countries, Venezuela and Ecuador) supplied about half of U.S. imports—already down from a peak of 70 per cent in 1977. So in order to eliminate oil from hostile or unstable sources at its current level of consumption, the U.S. would have to replace roughly five million barrels per day. Can it?

The U.S. domestic oil industry says yes—“Drill, baby, drill!” By ramping up domestic U.S. production and increasing imports from Canada, the United States could end its reliance on all other sources. “If the full potential of domestic oil and gas production could be achieved while also increasing imports of Canadian oil, all of America’s liquid fuels could come from secure North American sources within 15 years,” says Jack Gerard, the head of the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group.

The API hired consulting firm Wood Mackenzie to analyze a scenario of maximal North American oil production. They looked at what would happen if “all impediments” to extracting oil within the U.S. and off its shores were lifted. Under their scenario, drilling would be allowed in currently restricted areas off the coast of Alaska, the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and in portions of the Rocky Mountains. This would also include lifting a moratorium on shale drilling in New York state, and speeding up drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico that were slowed after the BP oil spill. In addition, Canadian oil sands pipelines into the U.S. would be fully developed so that the United States can absorb the expected increases of Canadian oil sands production.

The report concluded that without any change to current policies, U.S. production would increase only slightly above current levels. But if development was encouraged, U.S. production could surge to 15.4 million barrels per day in 2030 (not counting biofuels). The extra six million barrels would slightly exceed the portion of current consumption that comes from overseas. In addition, if enough pipeline capacity is built, Canadian oil sands production would increase from 1.6 million barrels per day in 2010 to 5.8 million in 2030. “By 2030, we could be very close if not equal to not having to import from other places in the world.” says John Felmy, chief economist for the API.

Already, the United States has seen a boom in natural gas production, thanks to the same technology that is enabling the oil boom: hydraulic fracking. This process pumps millions of litres of water and chemicals underground to break apart rock and release natural gas or oil. It is used to extract natural gas from underground shale formations such as the Marcellus in the northeastern part of the country, and the Eagle Ford and Barnett in Texas. Not only does the U.S. now produce enough natural gas to cover its own needs, but it is expected to soon become a natural gas exporter. Meanwhile, the abundant supplies have driven down prices for consumers, and have raised the possibility of replacing gasoline with natural gas for some vehicles such as buses and trucks, and for industrial plants to be adapted to run on natural gas—helping to reduce dependence on oil.

“Natural gas could conceivably become the basis of a vehicle fuel in the long run,” says Washington-based independent energy analyst Joseph Dukert, although, he adds, “We still have a long way to go before that happens. There is room for natural gas to penetrate the industrial energy market to a greater extent—but it would involve bringing in new types of equipment. Industry has been reluctant to move in that direction so it might take some nudging from the government.”

As for oil supplies, Canada is not the only neighbour that could help the U.S. move off of Middle Eastern oil. Oil giant BP has looked at the broader picture in the western hemisphere and concluded that if oil reserves trapped deep below the ocean off the coast of Brazil are developed, self-sufficiency is within reach by 2030. “The growth of unconventional supply, including U.S. shale oil and gas, Canadian oil sands and Brazilian deep-waters, against a background of a gradual decline in oil demand, will see the western hemisphere become almost totally energy self-sufficient by 2030,” the company concluded in a report on Jan. 18.

But on the opposite end of the spectrum are advocates for the surest form of independence: ending reliance on oil altogether. According to the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, a “comprehensive but achievable” clean energy strategy could cut America’s oil consumption by seven million barrels a day by 2030—more than enough to displace all imports, at today’s consumption level at least, from hostile and unstable countries.

The biggest piece of the NRDC’s strategy is a major increase in fuel efficiency. Already the Obama administration has taken a substantial step in that direction. Last November, the President announced new mileage rules for passenger cars and light trucks. Beginning in model year 2017, fuel-efficiency rates will have to start rising five per cent until they reach an average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025—nearly double the fuel efficiency of today’s car. If the vehicle fleet on the road today had that efficiency rate, it would reduce U.S. oil consumption by 1.7 million barrels per day, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Under the NRDC’s plan, emissions standards should be increased further—to 60 miles per gallon by 2025—and seven per cent of all passenger-vehicle miles be travelled using plug-in electric vehicles. The estimated savings if the plan went into effect would be 2.8 million barrels a day by 2030. For additional savings, fuel-efficiency standards for new medium- and heavy-duty trucks would be increased from six to 10 miles per gallon, old vehicles retrofitted, and large numbers of heavy trucks switched from diesel fuel to natural gas. The rest of the plan consists of long-term changes to urban design and lifestyles—such as expanding public transit and planning “smart communities” that require less driving and commuting, a savings of 1.6 million barrels per day. Another 1.6 million barrels per day could be saved by a combination of conservation initiatives, including fuel-efficient replacement tires and motor oil. “The fact of the matter is that the lowest hanging fruit lie in efficiency and clean fuel technology,” says Anthony Swift, an attorney for the NRDC.

Environmentalists also argue that reducing supply is a more “secure” form of energy independence. The price of oil is set by global markets regardless of whether oil is produced in the U.S. or imported from Canada, so instability in the Middle East that leads to price hikes will still be felt by North American consumers. “Should OPEC or any other major exporter choose to cut off supplies to any country, supply shortages and a price spike are likely to affect every major importing country regardless of where they get their oil,” says Swift.

The National Defense University’s Sullivan, though, says that energy security is greater when supply is guaranteed, even if prices are high: it’s the difference between paying more at the pump—and a scenario under which no oil can be had at any price. Still, the maximalist North American production scenario is unlikely to happen in the kind of time frame contemplated by the oil industry, or ever, given environmental concerns, political opposition and infrastructure challenges. Witness the years of delay and impediments to building the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would have helped move not only Alberta crude but also domestic U.S. shale oil. Or take the mounting opposition to the hydraulic fracking that underpins so much of new domestic production—a major concern for environmentalists as well as local communities concerned about the possibility that the aquifers that supply their drinking water could be contaminated by chemicals.

There is also reason to be pessimistic about the political prospects of achieving independence purely by reducing fossil fuel consumption through greater conservation and the use of renewable “green” energy sources. A case in point is the controversy that erupted over the Obama administration’s half-billion-dollar loan guarantee to solar-panel-maker Solyndra Corporation in 2009. The company went bankrupt and taxpayers were left on the hook, in a debacle that critics have made into a poster child for wasteful government efforts to expand clean energy production faster than market forces would do on their own.

Indeed, the most likely way to reach oil independence by 2030 is probably a combination of some increase in production, alongside further reductions in demand. “In order for North America to become energy independent, there would have to be substantial changes in the demand side of the equation as well as supply,” says Joseph Dukert, an independent energy analyst in Washington. Murray Smith, a former Alberta energy minister and the province’s former envoy to Washington, agrees. “If you sat down and formed a presidential commission and said, ‘How do we do this? How do we get to the math?’ you could come very close to energy independence. It would require some increased availability of drilling in the U.S., changing natural gas into a transportation fuel, and it would require further savings on making the hydrocarbon molecule more efficient, and increasing the level of diesel engine penetration in the marketplace.” Smith adds, “I don’t think it’s a dream out of reach—but it’s an elusive dream. You have to commit to it.”

But rather than Americans uniting around a plan for the future, the politics have become divided. The pro-drilling advocates and the anti-oil advocates have taken to the barricades, as the Keystone and Solyndra clashes show. Republicans and Democrats have made energy a partisan issue. Each side has enthusiasm and fundraising for their cause—be it from the oil industry or national environmental groups. There is little evidence of a constituency for a compromise approach that could realistically take North American energy independence from buzzword to reality.

“It would be best to have a full, comprehensive energy security policy, but this is unlikely to happen any time soon,” Sullivan testified to a congressional committee earlier this year. “It seems we will need to settle for ad hoc improvements in the diversification of supplies and other ad hoc policy measures, until the real shocks hit us in waves upon waves upon waves of economic and energy security woes.”

A year later, Egypt still dreaming of change

By Sally Armstrong - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 10:50 AM - 0 Comments

The crowds were sparse, but hope remains in Tahrir square

Amel Pain/EPA/Keystone Press

It has all the trappings of a circus—tents with guy wires, wagons of fast food, green tea, trinkets and Egyptian flags being hawked to families with small children. The only item missing is the crowd at Tahrir Square on Feb. 11, the anniversary of the fall of former president Hosni Mubarak and the day the protesters have called for a national public strike. A year ago, more than a million Egyptians massed at the square and accomplished what everyone in the world thought impossible: they tossed out the bully who’d been controlling them for 30 years. But now, with Mubarak in a sickbed in jail, and after the first free elections in Egypt’s history and just months before a presidential election, the sun is setting on Tahrir Square and its famous 18-day protest.

Egyptians may well be biding their time, poised to come together again, but like the players in a chess game they are waiting for the government, a.k.a. the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, to make the next move. The military had gained their adoration for seemingly supporting the people during the uprising a year ago, but are now the hated remnants of the old regime that continue to rule the country. Still, it’s the diehards and the discontents who are here on Tahrir Square on this anniversary, punching their placards into the air, shouting their slogans, leading the sparse crowd in the old battle cries: “Those who chant will never die,” and, “We will not be quiet.”

Marchers arrive and hoist a leader onto young shoulders, who demands the military get out of the business of governing (even though the rulers have promised to step down after the June presidential elections). Then, like a travelling road show, the marchers move on.

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Record-low temperatures cause sauerkraut disaster in Germany

By Patricia Treble - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

The pickled cabbage, spilled on a German highway, froze instantly. It took four hours for emergency workers to clean it up.

Ina Fassbender/Reuters

The brutally cold weather that has plagued most of Europe for more than two weeks has killed more than 450 people. Though mother nature’s icy grip on the continent has relaxed lately, temperatures are still far below seasonal norms. And that has put Europe’s transportation system under increasing stress.

Heavy blankets of snow have closed highways and isolated villages in the Balkans. The Danube River is so packed with ice that the vital commercial waterway is closed from Austria to the Black Sea. Further north, in Germany, much of the canal system has been closed due to ice. Last Friday, the link between the canals and the Rhine River, Europe’s busiest waterway, was frozen shut, effectively stranding northern industrial sites.

The cold is doing more than snapping temperature records—it’s also playing havoc with daily life. Last week, drivers on the autobahn near Frankfurt were stuck in a 10-km long traffic jam when a truck carrying sauerkraut spilled its load after being involved in a multi-vehicle accident. The pickled cabbage froze instantly and formed such a bond with the highway surface that it took four hours for emergency workers to scrape away the mess.
Syria: ‘Now this is a war’

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Pro-democracy protesters talk to ‘Maclean’s’ about the toll of fighting the regime and their fears for the future

AFP/Getty Images

With scores of people seemingly dying by the day, the situation in Syria appears to be spiralling even more out of control as the repressive regime of Bashar al-Assad tries to hang on to power. But the brutality of the government’s response to pro-democracy protesters has been ongoing for almost a year—and the victims will bear lifelong scars from their experiences. Yahya Hawash, 27, is among them. When he joined the peaceful demonstrations in Damascus last April, he was filled with hopes for the future. Marching with the crowds through the city streets brought an unprecedented exhilaration, and a fleeting taste of freedom. Almost a year on, paralyzed from the waist down and hiding from the “shabiha”—government thugs—Hawash spoke to Maclean’s about the innocence of those first days, his ensuing ordeal, and the fears he holds for his country that is now plunged deep into civil war.

“We were at the demonstration in al-Midan in central Damascus in April last year—thousands of people had gathered,” he says. “We were unarmed, just calling for freedom. We didn’t imagine in those days that the security forces would shoot.” The first rounds came within minutes of the demonstration beginning. Panicked demonstrators tried to flee, scrambling over the wounded, pushing into side alleys and back streets to get out of the “kill zone.” Hawash saw a friend hit the ground as a bullet smacked into his head. He was trying to drag the body from the street when he felt a searing pain as a bullet entered his back. Then everything went dark.

“There were six of us taken to hospital,” recalls Hawash, where the staff treated them like traitors. “They handled us roughly, they pushed injections in in painful ways, and spat insults at us. If someone threw up from the pain, they would beat him.” But nothing could have prepared Hawash for what happened next. Three armed security officers in leather jackets, with moustaches emulating the small one sported by Bashar al-Assad, stopped at the bed beside his. “I overheard a security man say, ‘He was injured in the protest. Let him die,’ ” says Hawash. Hospital staff then wheeled the sedated man to a nearby operating theatre. Then, says Hawash, “We heard gunshots. They killed him there in the operation room. There is no question.”

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How do you clean a Japanese mountain?

By Nicholas Köhler - Monday, February 20, 2012 at 1:39 PM - 0 Comments

One year after the disaster at the Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, nearby villages remain empty

I’ll never forget driving a mountain road in February 2012 through a Fukushima prefecture farming village so picturesque it could be the setting of a fairy tale or traditional Japanese ghost story, and coming upon a group of masked, white-clad men in Hazmat suits striding through the fields and surrounding our car. I was driving with photographer Noriko Hayashi, who also translated for me, and I asked her, half joking: why aren’t we wearing head-to-toe protective gear?

These workers go from settlement to settlement in the region surrounding the crippled Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, attempting to do something that’s rarely, if ever, been tried: clean up fallout.

If it weren’t so frightening, it would be funny. In conversation with a Fukushima farmer, he mentioned how much of the mountain behind his farmhouse authorities had told him they would commit to decontaminating: 20 metres. He wants the whole mountain cleaned. How do you clean a mountain, I asked him.

The way he understood it, those masked men in Hazmat suits would come and collect the fallen leaves.

This is one of the startling things about the nuclear disaster that is still unfolding in Tohoku: the collision between fairy tale villages like this one and science fiction.

Along the winding Japan National Route 399, which skirts the 20-km exclusion zone surrounding the Dai-Ichi plant, many of the villages are empty, evacuated by local decree. Only small security outposts, here and there, disrupt the human emptiness: the little huts, positioned at important junctions, are manned by farmers who can no longer put their fields to use due to the contamination.

Each time a car passes, they murmur the license plate number to each other and record who is coming and who is going. The concern is that robbers will plunder the empty villages.

On a little side excursion, to Namie, where some of the highest radiation levels have been recorded in Japan either within or without the no-go zone, one can stop the car in the middle of the street and leave the doors open to explore; you are hampering no traffic. The public clocks continue to turn over, the only sign of ongoing human routine.

Otherwise, in the middle of town, amid the barber polls that do not spin and the extinguished vending machines, the sound of rustling grass and the birds have taken over: birdsong has replaced the workaday public announcements that once regulated life in Namie. Road kill is left on the road: the crows, big as terriers, will deal with it.
Thanks to a donor, Harvard now has a Falik Men’s Room

By Richard Warnica - Monday, February 20, 2012 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Wealthy alumni are buying up naming rights to universities’ bathrooms

As a child, William Falik probably sat through a lot of jokes about his last name, which is pronounced “phallic.” But as an adult, he’s the one getting the laughs from his moniker. The Berkeley law lecturer and real estate developer recently gave US$100,000 to Harvard Law School. In return, at his request, his alma mater named a bathroom in his honour. The Falik Men’s Room—it comes complete with a plaque—opened earlier this year.

The Harvard toilet isn’t the first to bear Falik’s name—there’s a Falik Gentlemen’s Lounge at a repertory theatre in California and a Falik Men’s Room is in the works for Berkeley—nor is it the only university bathroom named for a donor. Dixie State College in Utah was at one point offering the naming rights to individual toilet stalls in a planned building, according to an early February report in Inside Higher Ed, and Colorado entrepreneur Brad Feld paid a reported $25,000 to sponsor a men’s room at the University of Colorado Boulder. And there’s more: one generous local citizen paid a similar amount to have plaques installed above three urinals at the University of Pennsylvania in 2005 that read: “The relief you are now experiencing was made possible by a gift from Michael Zinman.”
The Muslim Brotherhood takes to the airwaves

By Gabriela Perdomo - Monday, February 20, 2012 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

The Islamic political movement has its own, slick channel

Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is wasting no time asserting its voice in the post-Mubarak era. The Islamic political movement, banned in the 1950s, swept the first parliamentary elections held since president Hosni Mubarak was ousted, securing 47 per cent of the lower house through its Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). The Brotherhood is also showing off its media mettle, with a 24-hour news channel, Misr25. The name, which means “Egypt25,” evokes Jan. 25: the first day of the revolution that eventually led to Mubarak’s resignation last February.

The TV channel is slick. A female anchor in a fashionable head scarf weaves stories from a stable of 100 correspondents (not necessarily Brotherhood members). Mubarak kept a tight grip on the media; only in his last few years did the regime allow private channels. The Muslim Brotherhood, however, openly admits Misr25 is a tool for advancing its agenda. Which begs the question: are Egyptians getting a new channel, or simply a new state media boss?
A red card for England’s coach

By Leah McLaren - Monday, February 20, 2012 at 11:10 AM - 0 Comments

A football-obsessed nation waits to see who will lead the nation’s squad

Rex Features

Apart from the country’s highest elected ofﬁce, there may be no British job so heavily scrutinized and culturally signiﬁcant as that of manager of England’s football team. Britain, like the rest of Europe, is obsessed by football. And while its domestic leagues attract the best international players, making it one of the richest and most powerful sports franchises on earth, its national team has failed to win a major championship since 1966. To say fans here are a tad bummed out about this is like saying Charlie Sheen has a bit of an ego problem. Indeed, when it comes to football, Britain is as much a nation deﬁned by bitter disappointment and nostalgia for past victories as it is by an enduring love for its national game.

This swell of collective emotion is why, when Fabio Capello abruptly quit his position as team manager last week, England responded with a heavily qualiﬁed hip-hip-hurrah! Qualiﬁed, because the surprise resignation plunges the team even deeper into an ongoing leadership crisis just months before the next European championship in June. Hurrah, however, because Capello had long been criticized by fans and commentators alike on two counts: 1) he failed to take the team further than the second round at the last World Cup, and 2) after four years of earning $9.5 million per annum for coaching just a dozen or so games a year, his command of the English language showed little, if any, improvement.

To his credit, Capello resigned on principle. His dispute with the Football Association, over whether team captain John Terry should be stripped of his arm band pending a trial set for July over allegations of racist remarks, was a matter of professional integrity (though it didn’t make British fans any sorrier to see him go). Earlier this month, Capello gave a candid interview on Italian state television in which he declared he “absolutely” disagreed with his bosses’ decision to strip Terry of his captaincy pending his trial for racial abuse of another player, the Queens Park Rangers’ Anton Ferdinand. “I have spoken to the [FA] chairman and I have said that in my opinion one cannot be punished until it is ofﬁcial and the court—a non-sport court, a civil court—had made a decision to decide if John Terry has done what he is accused of.”

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The Santorum surge

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Friday, February 17, 2012 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

Support is soaring for the father of seven who offers the rhetorical red meat Romney can’t

Eric Miller/Reuters

With his sweater vests and earnestness, Rick Santorum has been called the Mister Rogers of the Republican presidential race. He’s also the new consensus conservative and, all of a sudden, the new front-runner—the last man standing amidst the once-crowded field of candidates not named Mitt Romney. In the remarkably ﬂuid primary contest, where candidates have leapt to the lead only to fall back within weeks, Santorum’s surge could not be better timed. He’s catching fire just as the nominating contest heads toward the March 6 “Super Tuesday” bonanza, in which 10 states will vote.

Support for the former Pennsylvania senator has surged since his triple victories in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado earlier this month. Now 30 per cent of Republican primary voters nationally say they support Santorum, compared with 27 per cent for presumed front-runner Romney, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll released on Feb. 14. Other polls suggest his national lead may be even larger. And Santorum has the potential to keep building his momentum this month with the Michigan primary on Feb. 28. Michigan was considered home turf for Romney: he grew up there and his father, George, was governor of the state. But Santorum now leads Romney there 39 to 24 per cent among likely primary voters, according to a Public Policy Polling survey. A Santorum win could deal an embarrassing blow to Romney ahead of Super Tuesday.

In a year when many Republican voters say they are looking for the conservative alternative to Romney, Santorum has now displaced Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, as the favourite among the party’s conservative base of right-wing voters, evangelicals, and Tea Party supporters. “It used to be that Gingrich was leading with all these groups and Romney was staying competitive enough with them to hold the overall lead. No more—a consensus conservative candidate finally seems to be emerging and it’s Santorum,” said a report from Public Policy Polling on Monday.

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Germany: Crowbusters gone crazy

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 5:00 PM - 0 Comments

A militant group of hunters has set out to exterminate the ‘feathered vermin’

After enduring years of springtime attacks by crows on pedestrians walking city streets, Germans could be forgiven for wishing a nasty end to a few of the birds. But revelations about a militant group of “crowbusters” determined to exterminate the “feathered vermin” has sparked alarm even from fellow hunters.

Going by online names such as Demonicus and Harras, the anonymous group of crow killers uses semi-automatic weapons to decimate entire murders of crows with maximum efficiency, according to Der Spiegel. They think nothing of driving 1,500 km to a hunt. Last year at least 330 birds were shot in one hunt that was broadcast online. Another 300 died in Bavaria after local farmers helped lure the birds into the hunters’ kill zone by spreading manure on their fields. Still, the crowbusters’ single-minded fervour caused a hunting club in the Westerwalk mountains to ban the group from their region.

Regardless of concerns about the hunters’ zealousness, Germans just aren’t fond of crows, especially when they go on the offence during nesting season. In 2010, so many Berlin residents were assaulted that one bloodied area posted warning signs.
Iceland: a new model for dealing with collapse?

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 8:40 AM - 0 Comments

Thanks to unorthodox measures, the economy is bouncing back

Stian Lysberg Solum/Reuters

As of this week, more than 27,000 Icelanders have signed a petition urging outgoing four-term President Ólafur Grímsson (who famously stood in the way of the U.K. and Netherlands collecting billions owed by one of Iceland’s failed banks) to seek an unusual ﬁfth term in ofﬁce—not an insigniﬁcant number in a country of just 320,000. And why not? Just over three years after Iceland’s economy imploded, the country is already showing early signs of recovery while the U.S. economy stagnates and countries in the EU grapple with painful austerity measures and a mounting debt crisis that threatens to rip the eurozone apart.

The remarkable turn of events in Iceland has, not surprisingly, caused some to wonder whether the country’s unorthodox handling of the 2008 ﬁnancial crisis—refusing to bail out the banks and jealously guarding and even expanding social programs—represents a model for other countries faced with a similar calamity in the future. The International Monetary Fund, which lent Iceland US$2.1 billion, even co-hosted a conference with the government on the subject in Reykjavik last fall. “The suffering that so many of our citizens are facing is unnecessary,” wrote Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who was one of the conference’s invited guests. “If this is a time of incredible pain and a much harsher society, that was a choice. It didn’t and doesn’t have to be this way.” Or does it?

There’s no question that Iceland has come a long way in a very short period of time. GDP is up three per cent, unemployment is below seven per cent (though still high by Iceland’s standards) and, last year, the government returned to the international ﬁnancial markets with a US$1-billion sale of sovereign bonds. It’s a far cry from just over three years ago when normally peaceful Icelanders were rioting in the streets—the end result of efforts to remake the island’s economy into one that was built on ﬁnancial wizardry instead of ﬁsheries. Privatized in 2000, Iceland’s banks relied on their somewhat unknown, though not necessarily bad, reputation and high interest rates to sell foreign bonds, and were then tapped for loans by ambitious local businessmen who bought huge stakes in overseas assets. As the industry took off, Icelanders ﬂocked to work in Reykjavik’s outsized ﬁnancial district and drove Land Rovers through the streets. Several banks also began offering savings accounts to foreign depositors, a move that would later come back to haunt the tiny country. By the time the credit crunch hit, Iceland’s three largest banks held debts worth a staggering 10 times the GDP. The fallout wasn’t pretty.

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Japan, one year later: glimmers of life in a ghost town

By Nicholas Köhler - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 at 3:58 PM - 0 Comments

The fishing village of Minamisanriku takes small steps toward recovery

Most people in Sendai are living their lives much as though nothing happened on March 11, 2011. On the surface, anyway.

But push on north as the sun is setting over the Tohoku region, toward the town of Minamisanriku, and the blackness overtakes you.

First the mountains roll in toward the coast to swallow up the roads; then, little by little, the lights are extinguished. What’s missing is all the ambient light that vital, living towns emit. I’ve seldom driven in such pitch darkness. That’s what a ghost town after dark looks like. And Minamisanriku is very nearly a ghost town.

When I was last in Minamisanriku the roads were strewn with muck or littered with boats, the buildings were decorated with the ropes and buoys of the oyster farms that once thrived here and the tsunami, which struck shortly after the massive earthquake of March 11, toppled buildings.

All that’s gone now—the streets scrubbed, most of the debris carted away and sorted into metal or wood or plastic. What’s left isn’t much of a town. Continue…
Cyprus cozies up to Russia

By Jen Cutts - Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 10:10 AM - 0 Comments

Cypriot officials let a Russian ship loaded with ammunition sail on to Syria

Andreas Lazarou/AFP/Getty Images

A Russian ship’s clandestine cargo has made plain the country’s cosy relationship with Cyprus, says the U.K.’s Guardian. The MS Chariot was carrying 60 tonnes of ammunition bound for Syria when it made an unplanned stop at the Cypriot port of Limassol. Cyprus, a member of the European Union, should have held up the ship; the EU has banned arms sales to the Syrian regime, to hamstring its brutal backlash to its citizens’ calls for change (Russia is unwavering in its support of Syria, a key ally). Instead, Cypriot officials skipped inspections and allowed the Chariot to refuel and set sail, after its captain gave his word he would alter his course and head for Turkey. The ship then fell off radar screens. It docked in Syria on Jan. 12.

It’s all evidence of Cyprus’s “embarrassing subservience” to Russia, says an anonymous columnist in the Cyprus Mail. The Guardian points to the many Russians now living in Limassol, a resort town offering all the comforts of home. There’s also the siren call of Cyprus’s low corporate tax rate for Russian businesses. And, last but not least, there’s the 2.5-billion-euro loan Russia has promised to boost Cyprus’s flagging economy. The second instalment was delivered on Jan. 26.
Japan, one year later

By Nicholas Köhler - Monday, February 13, 2012 at 10:49 PM - 0 Comments

A lot has changed but the country is still scarred by the earthquake and tsunami

Houses burn in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture, Tohoku region on the night of March 11, 2011. (Japan Ground Self-Defense Force via NHK TV/AP Photo)

One year after the earthquake and tsunami that rocked Japan, Maclean’s senior writer Nicholas Kohler is back. He will be visiting communities on Japan’s northeastern coast, talking to survivors and posting on Macleans.ca all week, chronicling the story of a people’s comeback from devastation.

It’s hard to believe how much has changed in 11 months.

My last dispatch from Japan appeared on April 11, exactly a month after an earthquake and subsequent tsunami devastated Japan’s northeastern coast and crippled the Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima.

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How radical Salafists are wreaking havoc in Nigeria

By Michael Petrou - Monday, February 13, 2012 at 11:50 AM - 0 Comments

Boko Haram rejects Western education, as well as democracy

Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters

An upstart Islamist militia is causing havoc in Nigeria, killing more than 250 people this year alone, and almost 1,000 since its insurgency began 2½ years ago. Its attacks have emptied schools in the north of the country, stoked sectarian tensions between Christians and Muslims, and threatened the stability of a state that is a key Western ally and a potential economic powerhouse in Africa.

Boko Haram is the name locals in the north of Nigeria have given to the extreme Salafist group that calls itself “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teaching and Jihad.” Its nickname, which roughly translates as “Western education is sinful,” isn’t inaccurate. The group rejects Western education, as well as democracy and Nigeria’s constitution. Its founder, Mohammad Yusuf, once explained to the BBC that Western education was sacrilegious because, among other things, it teaches that the Earth isn’t flat.

Boko Haram began about a decade ago under Yusuf’s spiritual leadership. In July 2009, it launched attacks on police stations across northeast Nigeria. Hundreds died in clashes, as well as in the resulting crackdown when security forces murdered suspected Boko Haram members in cold blood.

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A beleaguered Texas school district ditches sports

By Emma Teitel - Monday, February 13, 2012 at 11:15 AM - 0 Comments

The move may worsen student attendance, not improve it

Michael Zamora/Caller-Times

A school district in southern Texas is doing the unthinkable (if you’re a Texan, that is): it’s eliminating its highly popular athletics program in hopes of preventing an imminent state-mandated closure—the result of an abysmal academics record. Basketball, baseball, track, tennis, and—wait for it—football will be slashed from the district’s curriculum and budget, says Premont superintendent Ernest Singleton, to save money and give students more time for school work. In fact, the Premont Independent School District’s academic standing and student attendance record is so low that the district has started sending a group of school officials to knock on the doors of truant students’ houses. If the situation doesn’t improve, Premont students will be absorbed by another school district—and 90 Premont citizens will be out of work. But the athletics program cancellation could backfire. One 15-year-old student said the ban will make kids want to attend school even less. “Nobody wants to try anymore,” he said.
Fighting the Cuban regime—one tweet at a time

By Gabriela Perdomo - Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

A new breed of Cuban dissidents is storming the Internet

Desmond Boylan/Reuters

Cuba, with the lowest Internet penetration in the western hemisphere, is hardly social networking’s next frontier. Despite the barriers, though, a new breed of dissidents is finding ways to speak out against the Castro regime online. Yoani Sánchez, one of the movement’s pioneers, blogs, tweets, and is on Facebook. Yet, like the vast majority of Cubans, she has no regular Internet access. “We’re inventing the Internet without Internet,” Sánchez says from her home in Havana. Since 2007, she has been blogging at Generación Y. Its slices of daily life in Cuba—a “prison,” she calls it, where people live under a “patronizing” state—are like essays, carefully crafted by the trained language scholar. The blog has become a roaring success, translated by volunteers into 17 different languages.

Sánchez relies on friends and readers to update her blog. She’ll dictate posts over the phone to someone with Web access, in Cuba or abroad, or send digital photos of the document through her phone. There is no such thing as home Internet for Cubans; the service is reserved for elite officials or foreign residents with deep pockets. Internet cafés are too public and expensive, but hotels are a good resource. “I write and accumulate eight or nine posts, and once I’ve saved enough money to go to a hotel, I program my posts to come out once a week,” says Sánchez. An hour online costs about $8, an astronomical sum for a Cuban whose monthly salary is close to $20.

When Sánchez was born in 1975, Fidel Castro had already been Cuba’s leader for a decade. She grew up in middle-class Centro Havana, near where she currently lives with her husband and teenaged son. Sánchez earned a degree in Hispanic philology from the Centre for the Arts and Letters in 2000, but academia frustrated her; she preferred speaking about “real problems,” she says. After working for two years as a freelance Spanish tutor for tourists, Sánchez emigrated to Switzerland in 2002. But family and her love of Cuba got the better of her; she returned in 2004, vowing to “never leave” again.

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A royal honour? Thanks, but no thanks.

By Leah Mclaren - Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 10:10 AM - 0 Comments

The roster of people who’ve snubbed the Queen reveals as much covert vanity as it does quiet principle

Getty Images

Snubbing the Queen is a time-honoured tradition in Britain, a fading world power as well known for producing legendary iconoclasts as it is for knights and nobles. But the names of the modest luminaries who have, over the years, discreetly refused the Queen’s accolades and a chance to publicly be called “sir” by someone other than a maitre d’ has remained a closely guarded government secret for decades. Until now.

Last week, the much-anticipated list of dead Britons who’ve declined honours between 1951 and 1999 was made public. Thanks to a hard-fought Freedom of Information request by the BBC, Britain’s Cabinet Office was forced, after a year of resistance in the courts, to release the list of nearly 300 notable refuseniks.

Most striking among them was the Manchester artist L.S. Lowry, who currently holds the record for abnegation, having passed over no fewer than five awards, including one to be an OBE (officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 1955 and a knighthood in 1968. His friend and fellow artist Harold Riley told the BBC last week that Lowry’s aversion to accolades was not political but born of a deep modesty. “A person who is private in their own life has got the entitlement to remain like that,” he said. “If some public body decides to honour them, that is one thing, but if somebody feels that by them doing that, they change your status in the eyes of the public, well, that wouldn’t have suited him.”

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Mr. Harper goes to Beijing

By Richard Warnica - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 4:34 PM - 0 Comments

Six years after vowing not to sell out to China, the PM is hunting for a deal

China is home to the world’s second-largest economy. It grew by 9.2 per cent in 2001, even as its chief rivals, the United States and the European Union, continued to struggle. As a country that sells things—oil, natural gas, uranium—Canada needs access to Chinese money and markets if it wants to thrive going forward.

That is fact one.

China is run by an undemocratic regime. It spends billions of dollars controlling its own people, often violently, every year and it uses its influence to prop up some of the world’s most violent and unstable dictatorships.

That is fact two. Continue…
How super PACs are changing the U.S. presidential race

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 10:50 AM - 0 Comments

Shadow campaigns are outspending the candidates themselves

Jason Henry/The New York Times

This year’s Republican presidential nomination race has not only been the most volatile in recent memory. It has also been the first to see the rise of parallel, shadow campaigns run by independent groups that have been outspending the candidates themselves. The airwaves in early primary states have been awash with foreboding ads warning of Newt Gingrich’s “serial hypocrisy” or Mitt Romney taking “blood money.” The candidates have been able to escape responsibility for the vitriol by noting that the ads weren’t run by the campaigns, but by independent “political action committees.” Known as super PACs, they have pumped an estimated $45 million into the Republican race so far—doubling what the candidates’ own campaign organizations spent in some states.

The political resurrection of Newt Gingrich and his victory in South Carolina were paid for in large part by a single billionaire, the 78-year-old casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who together with his wife contributed $10 million in January to a single super PAC, Winning Our Future, a group run by former top Gingrich staffers that has been running attack ads against Romney. In the wake of Romney’s victory in the Florida primary vote on Jan. 31, Adelson’s desire to continue bankrolling Winning Our Future and its attack ads against Romney may determine how long the primary campaign slogs on and how damaging it becomes to front-runner Romney.

Adelson’s role in this race is exactly the kind of deep-pocketed backroom influence U.S. lawmakers tried to end a decade ago when they passed a sweeping bipartisan law to limit money in politics. The law capped the amount of funding any individual could give to a candidate’s campaign at $2,500, and banned corporations and unions from donating to campaigns and political action committees. It also capped the amount of money a PAC could accept from an individual, and the amount it could spend promoting a single candidate, at $5,000 each. The campaign finance rules were aimed at preventing any one person, company or labour union from “buying” a candidate—but it also meant candidates had to spend a lot of time hustling for small contributions from large numbers of donors.

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What to do with the Maoists in Nepal?

By Alex Ballingall - Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

Reintegrating the former guerrillas after a decade-long civil war remains a divisive issue

Prakash Mathema/AFP/Getty Images

Disagreements over the implementation of an agreement to release thousands of former Maoist fighters from enclosed camps in Nepal are threatening to snuff out hopes that an ongoing political stalemate can give way to the country’s long-awaited rebirth.

In early November, the coalition government of Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai—himself the face of the former Maoist insurgency—struck a long-sought accord with opposition parties to release 19,000 Maoist soldiers from UN-monitored camps. Under the agreement, 6,500 of those soldiers would be integrated into the Nepalese army; the rest would be given roughly 800,000 rupees ($10,000) to start a new life. The accord promised to bring some closure to a decade-long civil war that killed more than 16,000 people. A further 100,000 were uprooted from their homes in the conflict, which featured jungle shootouts, extrajudicial executions, bombings and assassinations as Maoist rebels tried to overthrow the government in Kathmandu and replace the existing constitutional monarchy with a federal republic.

After the fighting ended in 2006, the question of what to do with the Maoist soldiers was deeply divisive for the political parties jockeying for influence in Kathmandu. In a 2009 report, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote that the issue “is one important indication of the wider tensions between the political parties, which could imperil the completion of the peace process.” Indeed, since Nepal’s last elections in 2008, political infighting has resulted in five different coalition governments. Now, many contend this agreement may be the last chance for the currently elected politicians to draft and implement the long-promised constitution that would complete the country’s transformation to a republic after the abolition of the monarchy more than three years ago.

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Donald Trump puts the brakes on ‘world’s greatest golf course’

By Gustavo Vieira - Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 8:10 AM - 0 Comments

Businessman blames ‘ugly’ wind farm off the Scottish coast for the delay

David Moir/Reuters

Celebrity businessman Donald Trump sure keeps himself in the news. Last year the billionaire flirted with a run for the Republican presidential nomination, and so fiercely contested President Barack Obama’s citizenship that the White House had to produce a presidential birth certificate to prove the man wrong. This year he was awarded an official Scottish coat of arms by the Scottish heraldic authority—after being slapped down for trying to use an unregistered one—while taking another jab at Obama, calling the administration’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline “disgraceful.” And he’s also announced that he’s about to pull the plug on a controversial $1.2-billion development in Scotland, because of what he calls an “ugly” offshore wind farm.

That seems to be Trump’s latest excuse for not finishing a project that, since 2005, he’s been trumpeting as the “world’s greatest golf course.” The resort was supposed to feature a five-star hotel and hundreds of holiday homes on a pristine area of sand dunes off the Scottish coast north of Aberdeen. Now, the wind farm proposed by a group of energy companies would install 11 wind turbines about 2.5 km off the coast where Trump’s golf resort is located. Trump says until Scottish authorities decide on the fate of the wind farm project, which is not expected to happen at least until May, he’s halting all future developments for the site, including a “super-luxury” clubhouse that, according to a local politician, looks like “a Victorian lunatic asylum.”

As recently as June, though, Trump said that it was the global economic crisis that was forcing him to postpone building part of the luxury resort, including a second course. Now Trump is saying that because of the wind farm, he won’t spend another penny on his megaproject, even after allegedly pouring $160 million into it (the first 18-hole course is scheduled to open in June with only a temporary clubhouse). It all sounds very dubious to the strongest opponents of Trump’s plans: local residents, politicians and environmentalists. “I definitely believe he wants to sell it,” says David Milne, who has rejected Trump’s offers for his property, adjacent to the golf course, for years. A Trump International spokesman says the resort is staying. But since the wind farm is expected to be approved, it’s unclear whose family coat of arms may ultimately fly over the resort—or however much of it sees the light of day.
The rise of Egypt’s fundamentalist Salafis

By Adnan R. Khan - Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

How a little-known group of ultra-orthodox Muslims are shaking up Mideast politics

Shawn Baldwin/Corbis

If 2011 was the year the Arab street rose up in defiance of dictatorship, 2012 is shaping up to be the year of the Islamist. That may sound scary. Over at least the past decade, the term has come to represent fanatics around the world obsessed with sharia law, Allah-bent on destroying Israel and the West in a frenzy of religiously inspired payback. Egypt is the latest former Western ally to fall under the so-called Islamist spell, and the most important one to date. At the end of its first free and open parliamentary elections that concluded on Jan. 11, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) stood atop a rubble heap of liberal secularist parties, winning a plurality of seats and poised to become the powerbroker in a country literally sitting at the nexus of the West’s interests in the Middle East.

In the aftermath, Western diplomats and right-leaning political pundits have been wringing their hands over possible futures: that Egypt will abrogate its peace treaty with Israel, that other Islamist movements will take inspiration from the MB example and increase their political activities, raising the spectre of Islamist politics threatening the world’s oil supply. Stoking the fears was who came second: a little-known group of ultra-orthodox Muslims, the Salafis. Their electoral success came as a shock to most observers, though not so much to Muslims themselves.

For years, moderate Muslims have been struggling against a rising wave of fundamentalist thought within their communities. Salafism is on the rise globally, posing a bigger threat to the West than groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, who occupy a comparatively moderate zone in the Islamic spectrum. And the problem is not restricted to Muslim nations. In a series of interviews with Maclean’s in December 2010, Muslim leaders in Amsterdam complained of the rising influence of Salaﬁsm. “It’s the fundamentalists, the Salaﬁs, who are the real problem,” Muhammad Sajjad Barkati, the imam at Amsterdam’s Ghoussia mosque, said at the time. “The Salaﬁs are trying to convert everyone to their way of thinking. They are dividing the Muslim community.”

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Meet Mario Monti, Italy’s ‘Mr. Serious’

By Erica Alini - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

Italy’s new PM is a stark contrast to his predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi. So far, voters seem to like that.

If one were to pick a movie title to describe Mario Monti, it would surely be A Serious Man. Italy’s current prime minister couldn’t cut a more starkly different ﬁgure from his bigmouth, scandal-prone predecessor. An economics professor and the head of one of Italy’s most prestigious universities before he was tapped to lead the country in November of last year, Monti earned the nickname “Super Mario” for taking on Germany’s powerful regional banks and then Microsoft during his tenure as European Union commissioner for competition in the early 2000s. His time in Brussels proved he was everything that Silvio Berlusconi was not: a man of measured words and bold action.

And he did not disappoint. Less than a month since taking over at Palazzo Chigi, the government headquarters in Rome, Monti had rushed through parliament a draconian, $40-billion austerity plan aimed at eliminating Italy’s public deﬁcit by 2013. He pleased Germany, calmed the markets, and still had well over 50 per cent popular support. Italians saw the pain coming, but simply gritted their teeth.

In Brussels, he received a warm welcome from both Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy—European newspapers were quickly abuzz with rumours that the Franco-German power duo had become a trio. And in some business circles, where France’s president is privately called “Merkel’s fool” for his seeming lack of backbone vis-a-vis the chancellor, people saw in Monti a man who would speak the truth to Europe’s most powerful country. In a September op-ed piece, the professor had pointedly reminded Berlin that it was “none less than Germany and France” that broke the EU’s deﬁcit rules in 2003, “thus sending a ‘don’t worry about ﬁscal discipline’ [message] to Greece and all the others.”

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Around the world: English lions, Utah cougars

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 8:20 AM - 0 Comments

And a German songbird mourns the death of Kim Jong II

Australia: Maybe they’d dipped into their own product, but drug smugglers apparently forgot about a $160-million shipment. The narcotics were hidden in the frames of 54 shipping containers that were never claimed and, once empty, were sold as storage units to Australian businesses. As of this week, police had tracked down all but one.

North Korea: The official news agency reported that, the day after the death of Kim Jong Il on Dec. 17, a songbird appeared at the country’s embassy in Berlin to mourn the Dear Leader’s passing. A plant also bloomed there in spite of the chilly weather, “in token of mourning.” Perhaps overcome, North Korea’s ambassador to Germany decided to go fishing on Berlin’s Havel River—without a licence. Police could do nothing because of his diplomatic immunity.

Iceland: On Jan. 20 Icelanders celebrated Husband’s Day, a tradition that extends back to Viking times. In many households, lucky spouses got to partake of the midwinter feast of dried fish, smoked lamb, putrefied shark, soured blood and liver pudding, and, perhaps, preserved lamb testicles, reports Iceland Review.

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What will Kate wear now?

By Patricia Treble - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 8:10 AM - 0 Comments

Royal Ascot’s fashion police bans fascinators

Danny Martindale/Getty Images

Royal Ascot has had its fill of the current less-is-best fashions. After years of hemlines creeping ever upward and hats shrinking into little more than feathered pompoms, the taste arbiters at Britain’s grandest racetrack are getting out rulers to enforce more conservative clothing requirements at the five days of racing in June that is Britain’s top social event.

Now fascinators, those tiny head-top confections so beloved by Kate, duchess of Cambridge, are strictly verboten—headpieces have to have at least a 10-cm base to be allowed into the exclusive invitation-only royal enclosure. In addition, all dresses and skirts are to be of “modest length, defined as falling just above the knee or longer.” Even tops and dresses concealed by jackets have new rules: they can’t be strapless, halter-neck or have a strap of less than 2.5 cm. And Ascot’s fashion police will also be casting their critical eyes over the men—cravats are banned, as are coloured bands on top hats and any shoe colour that isn’t black.